Once upon a time, I bought a twelve foot long board of 6/4 cherry that was supposed to be the top of the reclaimed cherry console table. But as fate would have it, there was just enough of the original table to make the full reclaimed version, so this board sat in my workshop for night on a year. I couldn’t sleep last night, so this board’s time came at about 3am.
The basic bench takes shape.
The entire bench is made from that one board. The top consists of two edge-jointed boards and is about 10 3/8″ x 1 1/2″ x 49″. The legs are 2 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ and angled at 10 degrees. The overall bench is 19 1/4″ high, which is my preferred height for sitting benches (and saw benches, at that).
The legs are beyond friction fit in their lap joints with the benchtop. I went through two pine beater blocks with lump hammer persuasion just to get them to seat in a dry fit. A small part of me wants to make this a knock down bench, but it is compact enough to be portable even when glued together.
As I was making the bench, I had the Saalburg workbench in my mind’s eye. But looking at it now, I don’t think one could ever mistake the two. In any event, this bench is more for sitting than for woodworking. I’m not saying I won’t bore some peg holes. I just don’t plan do much more than home handiwork on it.
I have some sweet square head lag screws left over from a prior project that would be perfect for reinforcing the glue joint connecting the legs to the bench top. But I still think there should be some gussets. I wonder if it’s worth doing drawbored mortise and tenons or just simple lap joints with glue and screws.
I remembered this time to leave enough extra to make the cutoff easy.
I’ll take some more pictures when I decide what to do. Until then, I plan to get back to dimensioning the white oak for the lower shelf on the bathroom vanity.
JPG
The Apartment Woodworker 
It’s hard to tell how far the legs are from the end of the seat but the engineer in me says a downward force on the seat will force the legs outward and might result in the half of the mortise at the end of the seat to be broken off. External gussets or internal stretchers that restrain the outward motion seem recommended but, again, it all depends on how far the legs are from the ends of the seat. Great use of the material and I’m with you on the seat height. Most chairs are too low for my taste.
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Legs are about 5″ from the end of the slab I added internal stretchers with drawbored mortise and tenon joints directly underneath the joints (like a gusset, but more difficult to install). Stay tuned for next week’s installment.
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